What do you use instead of Cloudinary in n8n when you just need a public URL?

Questions
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1

Cloudinary keeps showing up in n8n workflows for one specific job - taking a binary file and returning a public URL. No transformations, no optimization. Just a hosted link.

Feels like a lot of setup and cost (starting at $89/month) for something that simple.

What are people actually using for this? Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

  • Google Drive / Dropbox - share links break when external APIs try to fetch the file directly

  • imgbb / imgur - no native node, HTTP request wiring every time

  • S3 / Cloudflare R2 - reliable but heavy setup for something simple

  • Upload to URL - I built this one, full disclosure. Verified n8n node, binary in, public CDN URL out

Genuinely curious what others are running in production - is there a cleaner solution I’m missing?

3

Cloudflare R2 works well for this. zero egress fees and the S3-compatible API means the AWS S3 node works with it out of the box. i think you can set up a custom domain too but havent tried that part myself. for anything under 10GB stored its basically free

4

Hi @jitesh

Most people just use S3 or Cloudflare R2.
S3/R2 → standard, reliable, cheap
Cloudinary → overkill for simple hosting
Drive/Dropbox → unreliable for direct links

Simple tools exist, but for production, it’s usually S3/R2.

6

For S3, it’s better to use Private buckets and generate presigned short-lived URLs instead.
Sharing objects with presigned URLs - Amazon Simple Storage Service